In recent years, manufacturers of electronic devices have been concerned about greenhouse gases that are emitted therefrom when they are manufactured and used.
Although amounts of gases emission from electronic devices when they are manufactured are a cause of concern, if electronic devices have high power consumption, since the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted from the electronic devices throughout the course of their life is greater than the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted when the electric devices are manufactured, the emission of greenhouse gases is a matter of serious concern.
To decrease amounts of greenhouse gases emission from electronic devices while they are used, the efficiency of computation processes for electronic devices has been improved and their operations have been controlled using sensing technologies so that their power consumption is reduced.
These technologies may be effective in reducing the amount based on normal operations of electronic devices. However, when use frequency of these devices is high or when the functions that are built into these devices are used at a high rate, a problem may arise in which the amount of greenhouse gases increases in proportion to hour of use. In addition, there is a problem in which the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted largely depends on how they are used by their users.
Technologies that alert users to the environmental impact that devices may have throughout the course of the device's life are disclosed in JP2007-53433A Publication (hereinafter referred to as Patent Literature 1) and JP2001-356648A Publication (hereinafter referred to as Patent Literature 2).
The technology disclosed in Patent Literature 1 alerts the users to the environmental that devices may have throughout the course of the device's life and at each state at which the device is used such that he or she can easily understand and correctly recognize it. LCD 22 shown in FIG. 3(B) presented in Patent Literature 1 displays amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emission for each manufacturing stage and each usage stage.
The technology disclosed in Patent Literature 2 collects information concerning the environmental impact through various types of sensors, computes the environmental impact, and causes its value to be shown not only to service persons but also to general users. Patent Literature 2 discloses that when a user presses a power consumption button of a device, power consumption data appears on a display section.